Phoenix's Song
by Kal Ancalas
Summary: Because even the most practical of hearts can believe, and the smallest of friendships can bloom. For Absol Master's FF challenge.


_For Absol Master's challenge, though I have a feeling it will be disqualified on a technicality. Only slightly relevant to Maple, although then again most stories have been going that way lately. Don't like sap, don't read. And yes, before you ask, Revolt is still alive, though it's been on life support lately._

--

"Memories are like phoenixes; they may wither and fade, but they are never completely gone."

--

**i. perseverance**

The first thing Zak inevitably learns about writing is that it is harder than it looks.

Crushed nibs and feathers litter the side of the Ranger's desk, brave martyrs of the struggle between his mind and its own shadow. Pens lay in haphazard fashion across a battlefield of paper, leaving their body fluids behind. Meaningless adjectives and superfluous adverbs stand side by side on the prisoners' lines before Zak finally gives in to his desires and massacres them with a clench of his fist and a well-aimed throw towards the garbage can.

There is no exact protocol for writing, same as how there aren't any for how to shoot yourself in the head and live.

Zak takes a deep breath expecting peace, and smells ink instead. His candle flickers gold, but throws red across the pages. Wavy black hair, slightly disheveled, trails down from his head like rhetoric gone off-topic.

Zak doesn't consider himself a perfectionist. The word conjures up images of neatly-dressed bourgeois, filing their nails with a silver plate while swearing contentedly in a foreign language, because it just sounds nicer that way. He is an artist, an avant-garde, a man misunderstood by his own inner genius.

The mass grave that his wastebasket has become says otherwise.

Perfectionists are their own worst enemies, Zak knows. Physically because of the calluses and chemical stains on his fingertips, and mentally because he's lately been threatening to kill himself every ten minutes.

Perfectionists don't peer edit, because they don't have peers.

In trying to make themselves stronger, they only succeed in weakening the bastions of their own self-hype. A true perfectionist (the word _idiot _briefly flickers across Zak's mind) can take a page of perfectly acceptable writing and reduce it to two sentences composed of false self-confidence and true self-realization.

No one's perfect, but Zak doesn't like to think he's no one.

He signs his full name in orderly cursive (_Zakarias Flensing- _it's almost as if the stupidest name in the world specially mated with its own retarded cousin just to give birth to this), raising a fresh quill above the paper.

He imagines the candle throwing a shadow of an executioner's raised sword on the wall behind him.

Zak curses under his breath, wishing writing were as simple as archery.

After all, brain cells and neurons don't pull bowstrings.

Bringing together the candle and the paper, Zak proceeds to fail his aerodynamics essay.

**ii. helping hand**

"You're a brilliant student, Zakarias," his teacher at the Henesys Archery School drones for what seems like (and probably is, at least by his count) the seven hundredth time, "but you have to _apply _yourself. Do you understand?"

Zak feigns idiocy by nodding in agreement, the illusion helped by dark hair obscuring his eyes. The quill he's holding shivers under the duress of his clenched fingers, bending slightly in his grip.

Feathers hurt him more than bowstrings.

Zak returns to his desk and stares at it as though doing so will unlock the secrets of the universe.

Ten minutes later, all he's learned is that it's made of wood. Yellow, stained, artistically altered in pencil by two kids named Hector and Serena. Probably hadn't been polished in a couple of years. It smells slightly of sweat and drool. Most of it his own.

He wonders if things can get any worse, before remembering that they usually do.

"Class," the teacher says, clapping her hands (as if she's teaching kindergarten, Zak thinks sullenly). "Today, we have a new student joining our class. She's a transfer student from Maple Island..."

Zak's brain decides to emulate a roller coaster during the speech, shutting down at the phrase _new student, _segueing upwards at _she, _and then coming to a complete stop when he actually looks up at her.

Red. Short.

Not much else to say, actually.

"...is Aster Avia. I hope you'll all do your best to make her feel at home here."

Twenty identical, forced smiles pop up across the classroom as Zak turns his attention back to his desk, briefly musing if Hector and Serena's ideals of _2GETHER_ _4EVER:) _ever came to fruition.

He wonders why the footsteps keep getting louder.

"Um, do you mind if I sit here?"

"No, go ahead," Zak's mouth says, disobeying his brain.

Metal grates against the linoleum floor as red suddenly bores into Zak's vision.

"Are you...Zakarias Flensing?"At least she pronounced it right the first time.

"Yes."

"It's nice to meet you."

Zak raises his head a fraction of an inch to get his first close look at her; in the movies, the new exchange student is usually shy, has a cute face, and a drop-dead gorgeous body to match.

He mentally checks off number one, then wonders who the hell added numbers two and three. Truthfully, Aster is (despite his most charitable expectations) rather unattractive.

Her chest is almost nonexistent, her figure less lithe than cinematic stereotype would have one believe. Her head is the shape of a small and slightly oblong watermelon; her eyes are too small, her nose is too big. Slight acne dots her left cheek and forehead. The only thing worthy of notice is her hair; although it is neither short nor long and hangs past her shoulders somewhat awkwardly, it is a brilliant shade of flame.

He finds he is mistaken. Her hair is red-orange, not red.

The next words that tumble out of his mouth take him by surprise as much as her.

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

Zak doesn't say she looks thirteen.

"Forgive me for asking, but why did you decide to enroll in the Archery School? You look like you've never touched a bow in your life." Which is true, his mind argues as his conscience begins to take issue with his level of politeness.

She smiles slightly, the one reaction he wasn't expecting. "You're right, I haven't. I'm a beginner, if you must know."

Zak can almost feel his jaw hit the desk next to Hector's loopy signature, not even trying to stop the inevitable flood of questions.

"You- okay. First of all, how are you fifteen and still a beginner? Most people find their jobs by the age of eleven or twelve-"

"My parents were overprotective." she says wistfully, talking less to him than to the desk in front of her. "They were too worried about their only daughter getting beaten up by mushrooms and snails. Wouldn't let me ride the airship for years...though I begged like hell. I only just moved here this year."

Her last word makes him pause, thinking that short girls like her aren't supposed to swear. But then again, short girls like her aren't even supposed to be in this class in the first place.

"Fine. But how does that explain your applying here- and getting accepted? You need to be at least a Ranger just to be considered, and then the admissions screening is tougher than fighting ten Crims with one hand tied behind your back. I mean, I had to fill out a tree's worth of forms just to-"

"I'm not applying as an actual _student," _she says, as if it were obvious all along. "I'm just an observer student- so to speak. I can still take classes with you and learn about theoretical aspects of archery, but I'm not actually going to go on the range and learn how to use a bow like you guys."

The longer this conversation goes on, Zak thinks, the stupider it gets.

"What's the point of learning theoretical aspects of archery if you're not going to use a bow?"

She shrugs. "I just like the pursuit of knowledge. You know, learning new things."

Privately, Zak thinks that anyone who thinks memorizing aerodynamics laws, copying drag coefficients, and calculating flight trajectories is fun should be taken to the nearest hospital and thoroughly examined. Or just shot. To be polite, he does not mention this to her.

"Why don't you become a magician? They're all about knowledge, you don't need any physical abilities whatsoever and they're all just bookworms-"

So much for politeness.

If she is offended or annoyed, she does not show it. "I know. I've been told that a lot, but I want to keep an open mind. I mean, I don't think I could handle being a magician for the rest of my life. There's nothing wrong with reading books, but I could really use some adventure."

Zak snorts, waving an arm at the dusty, mildewed classroom. "Adventure, my-"

"Since you seem to be enjoying the lesson so much, Zakarias," the teacher says with a rare bit of sarcasm, "could you be so kind as to tell us the flight trajectory of the arrow given the prescribed conditions?"

_Shit._

Aster's eyes briefly scan the board, taking in variables, constants, and factors in the blink of an eye. She produces a pencil and scratches a series of words on the desk under a badly-drawn sketch of a cherub:

_360 ft., angle of elevation 57 deg., max ht. 29 ft._

Stunned only for a fraction of a second, Zak's mouth spits out the words "Three hundred sixty feet, angle of elevation fifty-seven degrees, maximum point at twenty-nine feet."

The teacher blinks twice before saying "Correct."

Zak's gaze falls like iron shot directly to the desk below.

_How did she do that? I'm a trained ranger who's been studying trigonometry for two years, and she..._

As if on cue, the end-of-period bell rings. Electricity seems to flow through the students as they suddenly spring to life, talking animatedly as they rapidly exit the classroom door.

Zak turns to Aster, Henesys sunlight streaking the sides of her slightly pockmarked face. Tendrils of flame flutter in the breeze, courtesy of an open window. Her small, dark eyes seem to swivel about the now-empty room before they settle on him.

His mouth begins to say _thank you_, but this time his brain wins.

**iii. occlusion**

As do most substances, fresh air has an interesting effect upon the human mind. Constant experience shows it either pacifies you or makes you want to kill everyone within a ten-yard radius.

Despite the pros of the latter choice, Zak opts for the first.

Gutstrings- drake, from the subtle but distinct smell- hang in thick sinewy strands from his fingers. He selects one without really caring, stringing his bow in a careless, fluid motion.

The practice ranges at the Archery School are color-coded, for reasons only a blind person could ever appreciate. Emerald green stains the first targets at five hundred feet, crimson at six, ochre yellow at seven-fifty, off-blue at nine hundred, and lavender at one thousand. The last at 1320 feet, a quarter of a mile away, are a simple, unpolished black and white.

If you ever get called "green" by fellow students at the Archery School, it isn't because you're new.

"How's the noob?" a classmate, Shidara, mentions almost casually, training her sight on a target reminiscent of faded sky. She has a habit of licking her lips whenever she's concentrating- something that Zak has never been into.

"Who, you mean Aster?" Zak replies. He tugs at the drake gut until it becomes comfortably taut, nocking an arrow to the string.

"Who else?" Shidara's tongue circumvents her upper lip before she fires. A distinct sound of wood striking wood echoes from 900 feet away. "Were you expecting Zeraion Phoenix to stroll in?"

Zak releases his own arrow with a twitch of his index finger, striking a lavender. "She's crazy good at trig."

Shidara nods absently, now focusing on a lavender target of her own. "So I heard. Either that, or you suddenly decided to grow yourself a few brain cells over the week."

Zak pauses before nocking a second arrow. "You know it's comments like those that keep you from getting a date."

Shidara pulls her gutstring so hard it makes a whiplike crack, lavender splinters exploding a fifth of a mile away. "Yeah, yeah. You're a barrel of laughs, you know that?"

As his right eye narrows to a slit and his index finger twitches, Zak wonders exactly why it's always the pretty ones who bite the hardest.

"Don't look now," Shidara suddenly whispers, her voice a scalpel, "but Little Miss Ascion's coming your way at five o'clock."

Common sense dictates that telling someone the words "don't look now, but..." will inevitably result in them looking.

The sight of Aster in a school uniform walking across the dewy fields, her short, frail body in stark contrast to the lithe, trained rangers around her, should be enough to send Zak into hysterics.

For reasons even he can't understand, it doesn't.

"Bet you five thousand mesos she only makes green." Shidara mutters in a low undertone. "Actually, I'll double that- ten thou she misses completely."

Zak opens his mouth and closes it. Aster comes up, her footsteps barely audible against the grass.

Now that they're standing next to each other, she looks much shorter. Her head barely rises to the base of his shoulders.

"You guys look like you're having fun." Her voice- so childish, so naive- is bereft of sarcasm.

"We are." Shidara's smile doesn't hide her disdain. "If you're interested, there are some spare bows in the janitor's shed."

"Oh, you misunderstand," Aster stammers, "I'm just here to observe-"

"No, no, I insist." Shidara smirks, making a show of stepping aside. "Go on. It shouldn't be that hard- after all, you are a student of the Archery School, aren't you?"

In the movies, when the new student blushes, her pulchritude is usually enough to bring even the most hard-hearted students to their knees.

All Zak can think, as Aster's cheeks flare an embarrassed red, is that it really brings out her acne.

"Here," Zak finds himself saying, "use this." His own Fire Arund dangles upon his wrist, its limbs reflecting Aster's hair in the sun.

Aster's gaze flickers between Zak and Shidara, her small eyes widening to resemble a deer caught in headlights. "I've...never used a bow before."

"You what?" Shidara gasps, feigning surprise under a badly curved smile. "I'm sorry, I just assumed- since, you know, you got into our class, you had to at least know what a bow is-"

"It's not that hard." Zak makes excuse as he nudges the longbow into her surprised grip. "Just raise it to your shoulder."

She does so.

Zak bites his tongue as Shidara gives an uncontrolled snort. "With the string side facing you."

"I'm sorry-!"

He realizes she genuinely is. Not like Shidara, her lips drawn in a smirk even as she professes remorse. Of all the times anyone has ever said "I'm sorry"- how many actually _are_?

"Good." He slides an arrow into the quivering, pale fingers of her left hand. "Now pull this back against the string until it goes taut, and release."

Cheeks flaring, Aster obeys. The arrow flops out of the bow at her feet. Behind her, the other students have begun to practice Strafe.

Before he can stop himself- or get a good look at Shidara's face- he scoops the arrow from the ground and moves behind her, gently taking her wrists in his grip. They resemble matchsticks.

He slides his hands over hers, feeling the uncallused skin beneath as he guides her fingers to their proper places. Her hands tremble- fear, or excitement, or both? he can only guess- as his fingers close over hers, the gutstring taut in their grip.

"And...you just let go." Zak whispers, liberating Aster's fingers from the drawn cord as the arrow flies true, curving through the air with the grace of a falcon. The shot arcs over the range in a perfect parabola, impaling a solitary black target straight through its monochrome heart.

Zak lets go of Aster's arms. Arrows fly through the air behind them; the other students are now practicing Arrow Rain. Behind them, Shidara's mouth resembles that of a dying goldfish.

Aster mumbles something quietly, her eyes riveted to the ground. She awkwardly glances up. Rose still tinges her cheeks.

"Thank you, Zakarias." she whispers, embers falling over her eyes as she speaks.

"Just call me Zak." the ranger says in lieu of a send-off, as Aster's silhouette grows steadily smaller in the distance.

"You know, she's not that awful-looking from behind." Shidara's voice interjects from nowhere.

"Don't go there." Zak unties the drake-gut from his bow and replaces it with a length of knotted cellion fur. Remnants of flame tingle his fingers as he runs his hand along it, testing its pluck. "She saved my behind in trig class. I only returned the favor."

"Right." Shidara nods, altogether unconvinced. The field instructor sounds a call for Inferno, and shuffling is heard as the students scramble for their cellion fur strings.

Zak guides his fingers along his bow and watches as plumes of flame follow.

**iv. eternality**

Heels scrape across the dry ground as Zak strolls the avenues of Henesys, scrolls and a dusty book tucked uncharacteristically under his arm. People on the street give him odd looks before they quicken their pace, which Zak resolutely ignores. Not that such looks are unjustified- among those who know him, it's known that books held by Zakarias Flensing are more likely to be used as bludgeoning weapons than suppositories of knowledge.

_It's not that I _want _to see her, _Zak tells himself firmly, _it's just that I really want to get some practice in at the range today, and I don't want to spend all afternoon scratching stupid equations for air velocities..._

Zak is an expert at lying to himself, at least to his own knowledge.

He turns the familiar streets, briefly passing the potion shop there and the equestrian statues there; Aster's house consists of a small enclave tucked within a smaller grove of trees.

The first impression one gets from the Avia residence is that of an idyllic forest retreat- until one steps through the front door and realizes the entire thing is about the size of a moderately large kitchen.

Dodging a low-slung branch over the front door, Zak ducks into the Avia living room/kitchen/guestroom. Aster is sitting cross-legged on the floor. Pens and paper which Zak recognizes as the notes of a lecture on fluid principles from about a week ago litter the ground beside her.

"You missed class yesterday." Zak says by way of greeting.

"I know." Aster rubs her hand across her face, staring intently at the paper in front of her. Her pupils are slightly red, her eyes shadowed. "That's why I've been pulling all-nighters recently. If I don't catch up, there's a good chance I'm going to fail the next exam."

"You?" Zak gives a laugh that is both true and false at once. "The day you fail a test will be the day Shidara passes one."

Aster smiles weakly. "I can't be too careful, you know."

Zak decides what he finds most attractive about Aster is her sincerity, her refreshing naivete. His jaded, older classmates- Shidara, for one- never mean what they say, or for that matter say what they mean. Smiles are little more than mouths in the shape of a crescent; words are no more than bastions to hide one's true intentions.

She is different. Every smile shows genuine happiness, every word is a key into her mind. It slightly saddens him that one such as she would be cursed with a lack of physical attraction, while girls like Shidara- well, then again, he thinks, one can't have everything in life.

"I brought you the homework from yesterday." Zak indicates the scrolls underneath his arm and drops them to the floor, causing their contents to rustle. "It's something about air velocities and stuff."

"Thanks. I'll start it right after I finish outlining Chapter 18."

"You-" Zak begins to say, but decides it less than prudent to tell her he hasn't started yet.

Aster ignores his expression, marking a line in her notes with the end of her pen. Her strokes are deliberate, slightly rushed. The nib tears the parchment slightly as she does so.

"That should do it." she murmurs, folding away the lecture. "I can finish reading it after dinner today. Besides, I've always liked science better- you know, math, physics, that sort of thing."

Zak's mouth curls into a sickly smile, which Aster does not see. "I still don't see why you won't become a magician."

"I've told you already. It's the lack of adventure-"

"Look at Ascion Blade. He was a priest and he still fought in the Last War-"

"-and look what happened to him." Aster replies bluntly, drawing a finger across her throat with a gruesome raspberry noise. "Just because I want a bit of an adventure doesn't mean I don't like oxygen getting to my brain, you know."

Despite himself, Zak laughs, his own voice rising uncomfortably through his throat like a mixture of syrup and acid. The noise sounds strangely foreign to him, and he evades discomfort by searching for his trigonometry tables.

"Shit! I think I left my trig function charts at home-"

"Don't worry about it." Aster reaches behind her and offers him a well-worn scroll, slightly yellowed from age and oxidation. "You can have my copy. I stopped reading it a long time ago, anyway."

Zak feels his teeth grind as he takes the scroll, unfurling it over his lap as he pretends to be interested in the numbers. He isn't sure whether talking to Aster could be more harmful to his ego, or his sanity.

Definitely both.

That, he realizes with a small twinge, hasn't stopped him from talking to her.

"Why don't you apply yourself more?" comes a feminine voice in the back of his head.

Zak nearly bites his tongue, initially thinking his teacher's somehow in the room. Then he realizes it's Aster's voice, and does.

"You're really smart, Zak. I can feel it." Aster whispers, a soft smile on her round face. "I mean, I know you didn't need me to help you with those problems in class."

The inalienable fact that she is telling the unvarnished truth haunts Zak more than any amount of sarcasm ever could.

"Math really isn't my thing." he makes excuse, brushing hair out of his eyes in a futile attempt to improve his vision. "I'd much rather be outside firing arrows instead of memorizing trig functions. I mean, come on- I know the Archery School has a reputation to uphold, but how many monsters I see are going to stop and quiz me on the air resistance of my shots instead of ripping my guts out?"

Aster pauses to scribble a number on her paper, the feathered end of her pen touching her large nose as she raises her wrist. "Don't be silly. Of course you're not going to need to know that when adventuring on your own, but the Archery School is, in essence, a military academy, and mass formations of archers need to rely on precise aim and placement to be effective. Many lives could have been saved during the Last War if the Elaesians had thought more with their brains instead of shooting wildly at everything that moved."

Zak opens his mouth to answer, then closes it because he knows there isn't one.

"So, why did you enroll in the Archery School?" Aster asks, pushing away the second scroll. Zak nearly bites his tongue a second time upon hearing a question he's asked himself for most of his life, and also because he's only just started the second problem.

"I...don't know. Glory, I guess." Resigned, Zak pushes away his own work. "I've grown up believing that success in life is the only thing that matters, and I guess the Archery School promised just that. I figured if I could get accepted into a place like that, then I wouldn't have to risk my neck going adventuring- I'd just learn whatever they taught me and graduate knowing what to do in any given scenario. Education first, they said, and the success will come to you."

Aster nods her head, flagrant hair spilling just over her shoulder blades. "My parents thought so, too. They've been giving me books ever since I became old enough to know not to eat them. I wanted to tell them books couldn't kill monsters, unless you threw them hard enough, but they told me not to worry about it, that it'd be more worthwhile in the long run."

"Were they right?" Zak sits back, crossing one leg over the other.

"On one hand, I guess so, because I got accepted into both the Ellinia Magic Academy and the Henesys Archery School with the physique of a piece of cardboard. But I can't stand the thought of being confined to a desk for the rest of my life. I wish I could be like the others, worrying about taking down monsters rather than the values of _x _or _y _for once."

Zak allows his eyes to rest on Aster, taking in her unremarkable face, her thin (he momentarily thinks _scrawny_) build, her hair that seems as if it were pulled from fire itself and glued onto her head at birth. Such a face might have been hidden behind a warrior's helm- well, perhaps not, but maybe a thief's hood at the very least, a bowman's scarf, or a mage's raised collar and mask. Instead it was hidden behind volume after volumes of paper and ink. Fifteen and still a beginner- he shudders to think what would happen if the neighborhood kids ever found out.

"So, what do you do for fun around here?"Aster blinks, a gesture that Zak returns with alacrity. "Excuse me?"

"I mean-" Zak's mind reels; is it possible that this girl has never played ball in her life, or watched a reality show on television, or punched another in the face for stealing her Omok pieces when she wasn't looking? "What I meant was, do you have any hobbies or stuff that you do for leisure?"

Aster's face relaxes. "Oh, that! Well, I..." A kind of embarrassed look veils her features for a moment, a look that, though on one hand adorable, does nothing to help her acne.

"If you must know," she admits, after ten seconds that each have their own individual calendars, "I write poetry. And- and I fold paper figurines."

Zak raises an eyebrow in unintentional scorn. "You mean...like origami?"

"I grew up surrounded by nothing except pens and paper. You do the math."

Before Zak can say anything else, she abruptly gets up and saunters to a nearby drawer, apparently looking for something. She finds it and brings it back over to him, cradling it in her arms and gently setting it on the floor.

Upon inspection, "it" turns out to be what looks like an overgrown red swan. Its wings are slightly too large for its body, its head unrecognizable until Zak finally distinguishes one half of its beak from the other. Its tail spreads out in a fan from the rest of its body. It appears to be in mid-flight.

"So, er...what do you think?" Aster whispers, her hands clasped in each other.

"Is it a duck?" Zak guesses, hoping not to offend.

Wrong answer.

"It's a phoenix!" Aster irately snaps, but her frown quickly fades. "I've done other birds in the past, like swans and cranes, but I found this the most challenging. I made this one the day I met you."

"It's nice." Zak says, half-truthfully and half to make up for the duck incident. "You like birds in particular, then?" he adds, just to change the subject.

"Not really, but they were the easiest to fold." Aster shrugs, petting the phoenix with an almost motherly air. "The phoenix's my favorite, though."

"Why, because it's on fire?" Zak says, before he can stop himself.

"_No,_" Aster says sternly, "it's because it's a symbol of hope and remembrance. You know, how the phoenix never truly dies, because it's always reborn from its own ashes. Well, I think memories are like that- they might wither and fade, but they're never really gone."

"Well, if I lit your brain on fire, I guess you wouldn't be able to remember much of anything afterwards, would you?" Zak says, almost conversationally.

"No! It's an expression! I mean...oh, forget it."

**v. nevermore**

Aster has other birds, too. From small robins to tawny owls and sleek eagles, an entire aviary of paper creatures adorns her room, which is about the size of a normal bathroom, barely enough for a small bed and smaller desk. She claims not to complain, though.

She eventually gives Zak the phoenix, although Goddess knows he resisted.

"It's really nice of you, but what am I going to do with it? I mean, it-"

He holds off from completing his thought, which is if you look at it too often it starts looking like a turkey.

"Why couldn't you make a figure of Zeraion Phoenix? I'd take that." he offers, as an afterthought.

Aster claps her hands. "Of course! Phoenix- Zeraion Phoenix! You can take it, and it'll remind you of him whenever you look at it!" Her cheeks flush with satisfaction as she says the words.

Zak doesn't reply, but privately wonders exactly what Zeraion's reaction would be if he could have ever known about his name being inscribed to a paper phoenix/goose/duck.

Fortunately, he is spared that thought when his teacher tells him to shut up and recite the first three laws of physical motion, a task made slightly easier by Aster's conveniently open notebook.

"You're going to have to announce your engagement sometime." Shidara chides him at lunch.

Zak picks at his salad, distilling anxiety through lettuce. "Sorry, applications are closed."

"Seriously, I don't know why you hang out with her." Shidara continues, ignoring his comment by way of dissecting her pizza with knife and fork. "I can understand if she's giving you all the answers in exchange for some sugar, but why _you_? I mean, there are lots of guys here, and your arms could use a little-"

Impaling a wedge of tomato on his fork, Zak mentally blots out her voice. _Why _did he hang out with Shidara, anyway?

Oh yeah- because of her abundant reserves of estrogen and the resigned knowledge that her intelligence raised his self-esteem. At least she talked to him- she usually ignored others in their class.

"Have you studied for midterms yet?" he asks, just so he can hear her speak in contrast to him.

"Of course." Shidara smirks, waving her fork at him.

Zak can tell she's lying, because he's an expert on it himself.

Not that he really had anything to worry about- as Aster had said, his math, though far from flawless, was good enough to pass the open-ended section, and his archery skills were second to none on the range.

It was just the essays that irked him.

At least with math, there's a definite, concrete process and answer, even if the formulas and theorems involved are a bit tedious at times. Quantitative problems are nothing more than a process- you add X to Y to get Z, and that's what you write. But writing is akin to playing Russian roulette with a bag of Scrabble tiles- you mostly have to throw together what you can and hope for the best.

Writing isn't simply a set procedure to divide plot by climax and add dialogue, and then multiply the result by the square root of an ending. Writing is an exact art in itself, a process (so to speak) whose individual steps have all been permutated and scrambled for the artist to string together.

Zak isn't very good at art.

Aster, on the other hand, seems to revel in that sort of thing. Every time Zak visits her house, she's always got something new flying around the ceiling on a string, be it a small finch or a raptor.

He hides the reasons for his visits behind the pretense of studying for exams, and tells his mind not to think otherwise, even as she explains how to calculate the effects of a headwind and what the difference is between centrifugal and centripetal force, and he pretends not to hear.

His mind obeys, just until the day before the midterm.

"I think I've just about finished Chapter 29." Aster mumbles tiredly, rubbing her sweaty nose with her palm. She tends to do that whenever she's concentrating- Zak wonders if that's how it got so big in the first place, but does not press the issue.

"Yeah, but I don't think I get what they said about flight vectors." Zak mumbles, his slightly bloodshot eyes poring over the text's minute handwriting, probably specially designed to drive students cramming before the day of an exam insane. "I mean, do you factor in the constant for gravity before or after the initial-"

In the next moment, he hears something unusual- the sound of Aster slamming a book closed.

"Forget it, Zak." she whispers. "You're already too smart for this, and don't try to convince yourself otherwise. I've seen you in class for months already. You haven't got anything to worry about."

"Says you." Zak murmurs, though not with resent.

"Okay, fine, I'll test you." Aster smiles. "What's the value of the constant for air pressure at 10 feet altitude?"

"0.974 atmospheres." Zak answers, before he can stop himself.

"See? You don't need my help for any of this." Aster winks, her hand resting on the cover of their physics textbook. "You're smarter than most of the people in our class, Zak. What are you so paranoid about?"

Zak begins to open his mouth but doesn't speak, half out of fear that his answer's wrong and half out of fear that it's right.

"We've been studying nonstop for the last few months, anyway." Aster yawns, pushing aside the book with her heel as she reclines back on the floor. It's then that he sees her eyes, deep shadows underneath them. "I could use a break."

"You're going to fold another bird?" Zak mutters.

"No, I've actually been getting tired of that." Aster throws her head back, causing flames to dance through the air. Out of exhaustion, she nearly loses her balance. "You know what I've always wanted?"

"What?" the ranger asks.

"To travel somewhere." Aster sits up, twiddling her fingers. "I've lived most of my life on Maple Island, and even then after going to Victoria only Henesys and bits of Ellinia. I've always thought there's got to be something more out there."

"Well, where do you want to go?" Zak wonders, not even aware of his own voice anymore; his brain finally stops trying to regulate his thoughts and gives up.

"Search me."

"Perion?"

"Nah. I've never really had much of a thing for warriors- or stone wastelands, for that matter."

"Kerning City?"

"I like not being mugged as much as the next guy, thank you very much."

"Florina Beach?"

"Well, maybe. But too many people go there, and it's always so crowded. Besides, it smells terrible down there."

"What do you mean, 'smells terrible'?"

"Well, you do realize those Lupins throw more than just bananas, right?"

"Fine." Zak grouses, chewing on the tip of his tongue. "Where do you _want _to go, then?"

Aster pauses, her round face momentarily wistful.

"I'd like to go to Orbis." she whispers, her voice suddenly ten years younger. "The city of the fairies...it must be like heaven there."

Zak pauses. His foot's fallen asleep. "Are you sure? It's a long way off, and we might not get back to Victoria in time for a good night's sleep. Besides, it's really dangerous there. I don't-"

His mouth pauses for only the smallest fraction of a second before it thinks, _To hell with you, brain._

"-want you to get hurt."

Aster's eyes fixate oddly on him, seeming to search to the depths of his soul. "Forgive me for asking, but last time I checked, you were a Ranger, am I correct?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then I'll be fine. I haven't gone out of this house in years, Zak. I'd die for just a moment out there. I want to see the world; is that too much to ask?"

Her eyes, tired as they may be, tell him the answer long before he can reply.

"All right, then I suppose it's a date." Zak mutters resignedly, getting to his feet.

She punches him lightly on the knee. "Don't start!"

"Yeah, sure. Listen, I've got to bring these books back to school first, or the librarian will be out for my blood. Wait here, I'll be back."

"Sure." Aster mumbles sleepily, reclining against the only table in the small room, her eyes beginning to close.

Zak breaks into a run once he clears the boundaries of Aster's house- which is practically the moment he walks out the door. The afternoon sun spills through the trees like a soft-boiled egg through toast. Zak trips twice, and thinks nothing of it.

He arrives in the classroom- empty, deserted save for last-minute equations scribbled by a fellow student drunk on his/her own paranoia. The handwriting could have just as easily been his.

He sets the books on the teacher's desk, accidentally knocking over a vase in the process and feeling guilty for feeling good about it.

Eyes that do not belong to him stare across the whitewashed walls, the neatly-aligned desks and chairs in preparation for the carnage to come tomorrow, the posters and diagrams of archery positions and formulas now obscured with plastic sheets to prevent the profiteering of opportunists.

He wonders how she felt her first day. Ignored. Scorned. For lack of a better word, _alone._

Zak can't imagine it any more than he wants to. The posters ruffle in wind that isn't there.

When he steps outside, he feels strangely free. He turns his head to the sky and sees birds flying into the setting sun.

Aster is sleeping when he returns, her head tilted back against the table at a strangely odd angle normally reserved for rag dolls. Her hand clutches a pen, its nib leaking slightly onto the floor.

"Aster?" he whispers, waving a hand in front of her closed eyes. Naturally, there is no response. Failing this, he rests said hand on her shoulder.

Aster's head tips forward and smashes into the floor with a dull _thunk_, her phoenix hair spilling flames across her paper. The pen in her hand hangs between her fingers for a half-second before it flutters down with her.

Trapped between his own worst fears and the inestimably more terrible truth, Zak seizes ahold of Aster and rolls her upright. Her eyes are blank. Lifeless. He cannot escape the truth anymore, and it hits him point-blank.

"No..._Aster!_"

He never notices the handwriting on the paper trapped underneath her hair.

His name, followed by three simple, monosyllabic words.

**vi. i love you**

He doesn't know. He doesn't care.

He doesn't want to know if it's too late to care anymore.

Zak has never liked hospitals. Despite all their attempts at care, of replacing black with white and red with less red, he can never expunge the inevitable connections that remain between medicine and the grave.

Sick people. Dead people.

Hospitals are places of death, regardless of what one wants to believe.

The nurse asks Zak if he wants ginger ale. He declines. Kerning's soot already blankets the inside of his nose. Chemicals, peroxide and phosphate and other industrial viscera inexorably taint the air, even as the hospital staff try their best to combat it with pine scent and beautiful receptionists.

The irony that the best hospitals in Victoria Island are located in its dirtiest city is not lost on Zak.

Behind the doors next to him, Aster's heart struggles to beat faster, even as his own tries to slow down.

He wishes he could give it to her.

The receptionist taps her pencil against her desk, for no reason. "Mr. Flensing?"

Zak's head barely turns. "Yes?"

"You can see her now. She's stabilized."

The receptionist does not finish the sentence she does not start.

"Thank you." Zak nods. White hallways combine with the sleek metal of dialysis machines and cardiograms to create a rare bit of reality in a surreal world. The cleaner a hospital smells, the dirtier it seems to feel.

He reaches her door. Room 455. He wonders if she should be in the ICU, or maybe if he's in the ICU and they've somehow allowed him to visit anyway, or maybe he doesn't want to care anymore.

His greeting is the slow beep of the cardiogram as it traces her life upon black display and emerald liquid crystal.

Her first words, so weak and frail, are "You're going to miss the exams."

_Fuck the exams__,_ Zak thinks, and probably a lot of other things as well.

Words have never come easily to Zak, through pen or mouth.

This is no exception.

"You never told me." he whispers quietly. His voice, though not harsh or intended to be, causes her to wince slightly. "So that's why you stayed a beginner all your life."

"Would it have made a difference?" she replies, her voice feathers in the air.

"A condition. You could have told me it was just that. A small condition, a little problem. I wouldn't have-"

"If I said that, I'd be lying." Aster whispers, not because she wants to be quiet but because her lungs are bleeding what little oxygen they have left. "I've been like this since I was born, Zak. I've lived my entire life believing- knowing- that I could never be a person. A true person, in the sense that I could never go out in the world and become a hero, like Zeraion or Ascion or anyone else-"

Her voice momentarily breaks, as does the rhythmic beeping of the cardiogram. However, the latter quickly resumes.

"That's not true," Zak mouths, because he knows it isn't. "You- you're amazing. You memorized all the trig function tables, and you got accepted into the Archery School even though you've never fired a bow-"

Aster waves a hand, or rather, tries to. "Just books, Zak. Anyone could do the same if they read long enough. I don't want to learn what others already know. I wanted to make a difference in the world. Every human being has that right."

"You _have _made a difference." Zak murmurs softly. He feels a sudden softness and realizes his hand has found hers.

"How?" For the first time he can remember, Aster sounds almost sarcastic. "By memorizing formulas and folding birds?"

Zak remains quiet, unwilling to say what little remains on his mind. He doesn't want to admit it, but after all these months, he's still too cowardly to tell her. She is so much stronger than he could ever be.

"You could have been a really good magician." he murmurs, unconsciously tightening his grip on her fingers.

"Yeah, I guess." Aster breathes. "But I've never really been one for mana control and all that. It's always been a little too unrealistic and fantastic for me. Look at all of this- these machines, this medicine- it's all science. All explainable, quantitative reasoning, governed by natural laws and formulas, and there's still so much to discover. Magic is just science we don't understand yet."

"If you dislike magic that much, why do you still like phoenixes?" Zak questions her.

Aster smiles, the faintest smile of all.

"Even the most practical of scientists can still believe, Zak." she whispers, barely audible.

Zak falls silent. In the distance, the sounds of Kerning City seem to fade away. A dark sunset streaks the tops of the buildings, the setting sun leaving violet trails across a blazing sky.

For all her intelligence, Aster had been wrong about one thing.

She _was _a person- more than he knew he could ever be himself.

She showed him perfection.

"Aster..." he finally whispers, knowing words can never begin to express what is truly in his mind, "...thank you so much. For- for everything."

Aster's eyes are closed, apparently asleep.

**vii. x (a kiss)**

He never really loved her.

He doesn't want to think about it that way, but the statement still sticks in his mind like a needle placed by an inexperienced acupuncturist.

Aster was just a friend. Classmate. Nothing more.

He could never have thought of her that way, he finally realizes, a strange, painful mixture of shame and regret filling his chest. No matter how smart, how friendly and sweet she was, he could never have seen past her exterior. Her beady eyes, her swollen nose, her misshapen head, her acne.

Was he truly that _stupid_?

In the courtyard, Shidara comes to him after the exams, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." she whispers, her voice slightly broken, and this time he can tell she is telling the truth. "I just thought she was just a nerd. I mean, if I had known..."Her voice drifts off, leaving Zak's thoughts to echo what he already knows.

"Thanks, Shidara." Zak says quietly, standing up and walking away from her. Fresh wind grazes his face. A robin chirps in the distance.

He walks down the familiar paths to the small enclave in the trees.

"She was always talking about you, Zakarias." Aster's mother says to him later, smiling even as she dabs at her left eye with a lace handkerchief. She is a near-exact image of her daughter, though with noticeably less facial flaws- and her hair is slightly less lustrous.

Zak fidgets in his chair. "I didn't do much compared to what she did for me." he says, frankly. "I mean, she was always showing me her notes and helping me with my math. All I ever did for her was to show her how to use a bow-"

Aster's mother smiles wider.

"She always wanted to become an archer, you know." she murmurs, laying her handkerchief on her lap. "But with her condition...Her father and I wanted to send her to Ellinia. But she was adamant. She wanted to do whatever she could to make her dream come true, even if she knew it was only a fantasy."

Zak feels his head ache and doesn't know why.

"Her one wish was to fire a bow once in her life." Aster's mother says quietly, creasing her handkerchief.

The next words take some time to work their way out of Zak's throat.

"Will there...be a funeral service?"

"I suppose." her mother says wistfully. "But money's been tight lately, and I don't think we could ever afford what she deserves."

"Maybe...maybe we could have a cremation." Zak suggests, the idea blossoming in his head. "It wouldn't be all that expensive, and I think that's what she would have wanted most. I don't think she would have wanted to be alone in a tomb- I think she'd probably have wanted to be a part of the world around her."

A smile lights Mrs. Avia's face.

"That's a wonderful idea, Zakarias." she says. "How did you know?"

Zak closes his eyes and thinks of phoenixes.

Four months later, Zak boards the airship at Sixtopia Station.

On the day of the trip, the sky is near-cloudless, the wind gloriously cool against his face in the heat of summer. Though the Balrogs don't attack on the way, a part of him wishes they would.

Zak gently takes the bundle he's carrying under his arm and exits the Orbis station along with the other passengers, eyes transfixed upon the city of the fairies. His Gold Nisrock gleams in the sunlight, its hawk's-head glaring down anything that meets its gaze.

Zak steps onto the observation balcony of the 20th floor of Orbis Tower, feeling strangely alone despite the travelers that occasionally rush in and out of the ancient structure. None seem to have eyes for him, preferring to treat him as a part of the scenery.

He unwraps the bundle, revealing Aster's phoenix in all its glory.

Zak stares at it one last time before doing what he'd come here to do in the first place. It was time for the phoenix to rejoin its creator.

"Hey, Aster." he says quietly, managing a small smile. The phoenix stares up at him with ink eyes.

"Guess what? I passed the midterms." he confides, brushing dark hair from his eyes. It hangs down to the back of his neck. "You were right...as usual. Ninety-eight percent! Can you believe it? And I barely got five hours of sleep...well, it's true what they say, miracles do happen."

Zak feels a ticklish sensation near his eyes and reaches up to scratch them. His fingers come away slightly wet.

"Finals were last week, too. You won't believe the stuff they had on there- I'm starting to understand why you never wanted to be a magician. I'll go insane if I ever look at another physics textbook again. Oh, and I also got ninety-nine percent on the finals, thanks to you. Graduating with high honors! All my teachers are surprised. They think aliens stole my brain and replaced it."

He laughs, and he can almost feel her standing next to him.

"I owe it all to you, Aster." Zak whispers at last, caressing the phoenix's head. "You were a really good friend."

He begins to unfold the phoenix's wings, disassembling it so it, too, can rest in peace. The wings detach easily- the phoenix is composed of several individual sheets of paper. He delicately unfurls the tail, before gradually unfolding the head and neck. All that remains is the body, a slightly elongated football-shaped piece of paper. he marvels briefly at Aster's ability before unfolding that as well.

As he does so, he notices neat writing on the inside of the crimson paper.

Aster's handwriting.

_**Zak,**_

_** If you're reading this, then it means I've given you the phoenix. It also means I probably won't get to be with you for much longer.**_

_** You see, ever since I was born, I've had a sickness that causes terminal arrhythmia. Basically, without going into a lot of medical terminology, my heart will always beat either too fast or too slow. I couldn't go out and get a job or even socialize with others because I'd frequently pass out and have seizures every so often. It also meant I wouldn't be able to live past my late teens.**_

_** When I first came to school, I was so nervous, and I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want you to treat me for better or for worse because of this. I wanted you to see me as the person I could never actually become.**_

_** I want to thank you, Zak, for everything. For being my first friend and for showing me how to use a bow. And even if I can't be with you when you read this, it doesn't matter, because we'll still be able to meet someday, won't we?**_

Zak finishes reading the note and turns it over- and something falls out of the folded paper and flutters towards the ground. He catches it in midair.

A single feather, its color a brilliant shade of flame.

_Even the most practical of scientists can still believe._

Before he lets go for the last time, Zak brings the feather to his lips, and thinks he can faintly smell her ashes there.

--

_Dedicated to Starlight, who still manages to make me laugh._

_-9.01.08_


End file.
